Cyril Conroy purchases the Dutch House fully furnished and moves his family into the grand mansion on the outskirts of Philadelphia.

Elna Conroy abandons her husband and two children to do charity work abroad, never returning to the Dutch House.

Maeve falls into a dangerous diabetic coma in the immediate aftermath of Elna's abandonment of the family.

Danny and Maeve meet their father's new girlfriend Andrea for the first time when Cyril brings her to the Dutch House.

Cyril marries Andrea, and her two daughters Norma and Bright move into the Dutch House as the Conroy children's new stepsisters.

Cyril collapses at one of his rental buildings and dies of a heart attack while Danny is fifteen years old.

Two weeks after Cyril's funeral, Andrea tells Danny he must leave the Dutch House immediately and permanently.

Danny and Maeve leave the Dutch House together, carrying only what they can hold in their hands.

The family lawyer reveals that Andrea legally owns all of Cyril's property, leaving only a small educational trust for the children.

Maeve enrolls Danny at expensive Choate boarding school as part of her strategy to drain Andrea's educational trust.

Danny completes medical school but abandons medicine entirely, marrying Celeste and building a successful real estate business.

Maeve suffers a heart attack, and Elna appears at the hospital to reconnect with her daughter after decades away.

Elna forces the Conroy children to visit the Dutch House, where they discover that Andrea has severe dementia.

Maeve dies of a heart attack at home in her mother's company, two weeks after the family's final Dutch House visit.

May buys the Dutch House with earnings from her acting career, and Danny attends her housewarming party without anger.

The Dutch House traces the Conroy family through its most consequential moments, from Cyril's purchase of a grand mansion to the siblings' eventual reckoning with their past. Cyril builds a life of wealth but loses his wife Elna, who abandons the family for charity work abroad, and then dies suddenly without a will. His new wife Andrea seizes everything and expels Danny and Maeve, leaving them with only each other and a small educational trust. For decades the siblings orbit the house they lost, Danny building a real estate empire and marrying Celeste while Maeve watches over him from nearby. When Elna reappears during Maeve's heart attack, the family is pulled back into the Dutch House one final time before Maeve's death closes that chapter. The story ends with Danny's daughter May buying the house and Danny attending her party there, finally free of the anger that defined so much of his life.

The core story of loss, expulsion, and the Conroys' long road back.

Andrea begins visiting the Dutch House constantly and without invitation, making clear her obsession is with the house itself.

After marrying Cyril, Andrea moves Maeve to a small attic room so her own daughter Norma can have Maeve's bedroom.

Cyril sneaks away from Andrea at dawn and takes Danny alone on a road trip to his Brooklyn childhood neighborhood.

Danny and Maeve park outside the Dutch House for the first time to quietly watch Andrea and her daughters from the car.

Danny's grades at Columbia suffer until Professor Morey Able takes him aside and teaches him how to study effectively.

Danny meets Celeste on a Thanksgiving train ride but walks away at the station without asking for her contact information.

Celeste finishes college and tells Danny she wants them to get married, and Danny breaks up with her in response.

Danny runs into Celeste at a funeral and they begin dating again after their earlier breakup.

Danny and Maeve unexpectedly see an aged Andrea emerge from the Dutch House lawn and agree they must stop their visits.

Maeve is hospitalized with a dangerous cellulitis infection and Danny rushes home to Pennsylvania to take care of her.

May performs as one of the mice in a New York production of The Nutcracker while her whole family watches.

In the months after Maeve's heart attack, Elna moves in with her daughter and the two women build a close bond.

Danny agrees to make peace with Elna after Maeve insists he stop rejecting the mother who has finally returned.

Elna announces she will return to the Dutch House to care for Andrea, creating a painful and unresolvable rift with Maeve.

Danny and Celeste divorce several years after Maeve's death, and Celeste declines Danny's offer of the family brownstone.

Behind the headline events of the Conroy family story lie the smaller but equally significant moments that shaped who Danny and Maeve became. Andrea's early obsession with the house and her calculated rearrangement of the household after the marriage planted the seeds of the rupture to come. Danny's years in New York brought chance encounters and painful relationship patterns, including his on-again, off-again romance with Celeste and his growing but conflicted drive toward real estate. The siblings' years of parking outside the Dutch House to watch and grieve eventually give way to a hard-won decision to stop, prompted by the shock of seeing how much Andrea has aged. Maeve's declining health, Elna's return, and the bonds they form before Maeve's death mark the novel's emotional closing movement. Danny is left to rebuild alone, making peace where he can and finally divorcing the woman he married for the wrong reasons.

The everyday moments and quiet shifts that shaped Danny and Maeve's lives.

Cyril uses insider military information about planned construction in Horsham, Pennsylvania to buy land and quietly launch his real estate fortune.

Fluffy is dismissed from the Dutch House after Cyril refuses to marry her despite the affair they have been having.

Cyril insists Maeve babysit Norma and Bright for an evening, convincing Maeve that he fully intends to marry Andrea.

During the Brooklyn trip, Cyril tells Danny that Elna was mentally unstable and that her abandonment is simply Danny's burden to accept.

After Cyril's Brooklyn confession, Danny and Maeve travel together to see the neighborhood where both their parents grew up.

On the same day the Conroy children are expelled, Andrea fires longtime household staff members Sandy and Jocelyn.

Sandy and Jocelyn teach Danny to administer insulin injections to Maeve and share their complicated memories of Elna.

Danny begins haunting foreclosure auctions in Harlem after spotting a distressed property near a basketball game he is attending.

Danny uses inside information about his medical school's land expansion plans to buy parking lots and fund his first real estate deals.

Maeve recounts to Danny the story of Elna's traumatic first visit to the Dutch House, revealing how completely out of place she felt.

Fluffy reveals to Danny that she recently encountered Elna alive and working in a Bowery soup kitchen serving addicts.

Danny realizes he likely saw Elna in the emergency room years earlier when a patient mistook him for his father Cyril.

Danny proposes to Celeste immediately after leaving his lunch with Fluffy, deciding she is the one constant in his life.

Maeve removes her portrait from the VanHoebeek wall display during the Dutch House visit and later gives it to May.

Danny's long-held anger at Andrea finally dissolves after witnessing how completely her dementia has stripped her of everything she once was.

Beneath the surface of the Conroy family story lies a series of revelations and turning-point choices that reframe everything Danny thought he understood. Secrets about how Cyril built his fortune, the truth about Fluffy's dismissal, and Cyril's blunt accounting of Elna's abandonment on a Brooklyn road trip show a family shaped by deliberate silences. Danny's path from reluctant medical student to real estate developer mirrors his father's, right down to the ethically questionable shortcuts he takes to fund his first purchases. The most explosive discovery — that Elna has been alive and nearby the whole time — forces Danny to reckon with the stories he has told himself and ultimately to propose to Celeste as a way of stepping into a different future. Maeve's final act of reclaiming her portrait from the Dutch House wall signals her own hard-won break from the past. Danny's eventual forgiveness of Andrea, witnessed in the quiet devastation of her dementia, brings the cycle of anger and obsession that defined both siblings' lives to its close.